Will Smith Lets Lecrae Dive into His Spirtual Healing on the Deep End
Many of us grew up with Will Smith as a defining figure in entertainment. He wasn’t just a movie star—he was a cultural icon, a chart-topping musician, and one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors. And for me, if someone asked me, “Who’s the one person you’d love to have dinner with?” my answer was always Will Smith.
But in recent years, the image of Will Smith – the persona, the character, the man we thought we knew has unraveled. If this were a personal friend, that kind of transformation would feel different and potentially harder to adjust to. But for someone who once stood at the peak of fame, watching him fall, then attempt to rebuild, I feel like this is a rare thing.
For many celebrities, redemption arcs often feel polished and predictable. And for someone with Will’s resources, it wouldn’t be surprising if he had simply dusted himself off and staged a more triumphant return. Yet, he seems to have chosen a different path. A more quiet, more introspective path. Instead of rushing back into the spotlight, Will appears to be embracing humility, navigating his way forward with a different kind of grace and perspective. This path has led him to a conversation with Lecrae on the Deep End Podcast.
Fresh off the heels of the first Will Smith album release in 20 years, Based on A True Story, he sits down at Uproxx Studios in Los Angeles to unravel an honest and open conversation about humility and being yourself in your art.
The start of the conversation feels like they’re tiptoeing around and trying to feel each other out. Will keeps saying the phrase “I’m brand new.” I want to know exactly what he thinks that phrase means. After talking briefly about Will’s creative well that has opened up for him, Lecrae points out that Will has begun to show the “shadow side” of his personality. This immediately takes the conversation a step deeper.
Will points out that the top of the human’s skillset is the willingness to die and then trust God and yourself to build the new thing. He alludes to an illustration of a little girl clutching a small teddy bear and Jesus leaning over to her, with a larger one in his hand. Sometimes, you have to let go for God to give you the next thing.
Lecrae points out that Solomon understood a similar thing in the book of Ecclesiastes. It’s all a chasing after the wind.
Will says, “It’s such a rare gift to reach the end of the material world.” They later agree that at some point, people should be given everything they want just so they can actually realize that none of it matters.
Will even says, “When you reach the end of the material world, only God is left.” And equates it to someone reaching rock bottom and finding God there as well. He calls this version the cliff top.
Will then talks about the infinite abyss that is inside of you. Alludes to the idea of unlocking the mystery of your infinite inner self. This is similar to the idea of the Atman (eternal essence of self) or Brahman (eternal essence of the universe) of Hinduism. Which is a huge shift from quoting Solomon’s Ecclesiastes.
When you’re interviewing, it’s important to let the person you’re speaking with share their perspective. You’re an interviewer, and there’s beauty in having a knack for letting the person speak and not interjecting your own thoughts into their narrative. You haven’t lived their life, and an interview is not the place for correction. I appreciate Lecrae’s delicate willingness to let Will Smith just be himself here.
Will says he’s defined love in this way for the last few years. “Love is being able to help somebody from the nightmare into the highest blissful form of themselves.”
This next line is a bar though: “Broken hearts are how we cultivate loving hearts.” The idea is that we can’t actually love people if we never see ourselves in a similar light. If you haven’t lived it, you can’t reach back and pull someone through it.
“If I had to say what my religion is, my religion is love. I believe in the oneness and possibility of harmony of people who are reaching for the one truth,” says Will.
Will then quotes a line from one of his new songs.
“We’re just a room full of sinners reaching for the Holy Ghost.
” He says everyone is trying to hold onto some kind of comparative superiority. In the past few years, Will has experienced being humbled and realizing he is not better than everyone else.
“The only place you can meet somebody and have compassion is when you recognize your sameness.”
I’ll be honest, I haven’t kept up on Will Smith like I once did 20 years ago. Once all the chaos was spinning around him, I’ve kinda chosen to look the other way. So this Will that I’m seeing presented in the Deep End is a less polished, more rough around the edges and vulnerable Will than I can remember. It’s like he’s embraced the awkwardness of being a human and making mistakes.
There’s a moment towards the end of this conversation where Will misspeaks twice. One time, he states Daniel is in the belly of the whale, then tries to fix it and say Daniel is who broke his hip. Lecrae looks into the camera with an editing note, and Will says, “Leave this part in!” The whole point of this conversation is that he’s okay with making mistakes in front of people, so let’s leave that in. I love that. And I’m not sure that the Will of 20 years ago would have operated in that same way.
Will Smith’s streak in Hollywood from 2002-2008 is a historic meteoric run of movies that all opened at #1 in the box office. He had 8 straight #1 movies in that span, with each grossing over $100 million in the US. (Men In Black II, Bad Boys II, I Robot, Hitch, Pursuit Of Happiness, I Am Legend, Hancock, Seven Pounds). No one has ever done that. This was a moment when Will realized moments of Art vs. Commerce, Inspiration vs. Competition and Lecrae asked how he was doing internally through all of that.
Will says the trick of the material world is that there is no end. He wanted the next thing to be bigger, he wanted the next thing to be better. But it never ends.
So now that he’s back creating music, Lecrae wants to know if the more enlightened version of Will Smith has to combat chasing the same things.
After 20 years of not putting anything on wax, Will reached out to others for advice. He sought advice from J (I’m assuming he means his long-time friend DJ Jazzy Jeff) and Kendrick Lamar. The response he got from them was the same: Don’t do this if you’re not willing to be fully you. Nobody wants to hear it if you don’t tell the truth.
Will says he’s back to making art for fun. Not to pay the bills, just to have a ball. “It’s more important for me to be authentic than to be number 1.”
He then says that the height of his musical experience is this current conversation he’s having with Lecrae. “Right now, this is the height of my musical experience. I made music for this.”
“I’m not making music to win something, to be number one, or to make money. I’m making music to connect with humans.”
Will says that this return for him is “returning with the elixir.” Rather than saying “now I’m authentic,” You show everyone instead.
The final part of the conversation has Will reflecting on how he’s learned to accept whatever life throws at him, trusting that he’ll eventually figure it out. At one point, Lecrae offers the familiar phrase, “The struggle is real.” But Will counteracts that line with a deeper thought:
“The struggle is real. The striving in the struggle is resistance, though. Just relax.”
Truth has a way of showing up in unexpected places. That statement made me pause. It’s something I had to chew on for a moment. In my own life, I’ve often found myself pushing through struggles, convinced that effort alone will get me through. But time and again, God has held me there, allowing me to melt a bit, to be still in the storm before I’m ready to move forward.
Five years ago, I might have expected a conversation like this to be more grand, more profound. But maybe I’ve grown too. This hour-long episode of The Deep End isn’t really about all the fame and exciting things that go with it, it’s simply two people sharing about life and wrestling with what it means to exist. Seeing others be vulnerable helps me learn to do the same. I appreciate Lecrae for creating space for this kind of dialogue, and while I may not agree with everything Will Smith says, something is compelling about watching someone who was once so large, speak now with such humility.
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This article is brought to you by Luc DiMarzio
Luc has been a fan of CHH for 35 years and has been writing about it since 2017. He is one of the major writers for Rapzilla www.rapzilla.com as he continues to give a greater insight on CHH. He has a huge passion for amplifying the underground of CHH. When he’s not bumpin hip-hop, you can catch him leading worship at his local church, rooting on the Chicago Cubs with his wife, or swimming with his kids.